Category — Conferences

Since Tuesday I have been in Milwaukee visiting SOIS and CIPR as part of my Information Ethics fellowship. I attended a discussion about a possible future conference on translating intercultural information ethics across the situated understandings that term implies across a plurality of contexts. That seems like a great project, I’m happy to help out there. For the rest of the time, I attended the conference Thinking Critically:Alternative Perspectives and Methods in Information Studies. It was an excellent conference and I met many interesting people in the field of information studies, most of which are leaders in their field or soon to be so. I also attended the 2008 Samore Lecture: “Interpreting the Digital Human,” by Professor Rafael Capurro, at the Allis Museum, which provided an excellent end to the conference. I had excellent dinners and conversation with colleagues that I’ve not seen for some time, and with new friends and colleagues. I suspect that I’ll be seeing many of these people again over the years. It was a great experience all around, though I did not get enough writing done on a promised paper that is overdue. It really looks like the CIPR and SOIS are up to some great things and I’m happy to be affiliated with them as an Ethics Fellow for another year.
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Unrelated to the conference and my fellowship, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Thomas Malaby who has a book forthcoming on Linden Lab. We spoke at length about problems of research, computer game studies, his work with Linden Lab and his related work. It was a fantastic conversation and I hope to have similar conversations in relation to my work in Second Life in the future.
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All in all the problem of alternative methods and the communities that support them is an important issue in my career. I have been affiliated with many groups on this topic from Phil Graham’s old NewMediaResearch, heterodox economics, and the political science perestroika movement list, to my current work with InterpretationandMethods and Theory, Policy and Society, not to mention my work with the Association of Internet Researchers. The work that I perform is primarily interpretive methods, from ethnography to textual analysis, though I’ve been known to use quantitative when it adds to the argument. The key to me though is to come to notion of understanding and being able to communicate what actually leads to certain understandings of the world. It concerns me that there are so many people with so many of the same issues across so many different disciplines and there is so little conversations amongst them. Though there are broad interdisciplinary efforts and efforts toward inclusion.

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hehehehe

and

chicken

Main Page – Pentabarf:
Welcome to the Pentabarf Wiki.
This wiki is used for documenting and supporting Pentabarf, the open source conference planning software.

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Pentabarf is a conference management system. it looks pretty nifty… it is a rails program.

far too many groups in the fields that i work with accept the singular account of economics…. so i’m distributing this.
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“Economic Pluralism for the 21st Century”
June 1-3, 2007
University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)

In the second half of the 20th century, neoclassical economics and its derivatives came to dominate economic thinking, teaching and policymaking. Humanity is increasingly feeling the consequences of this blinkered vision: the ever-widening gap between the very rich and all the rest; growing divergences in economic performance across nations and regions; globalization without global coordination for the common good; and economically induced climate change, with the mid-century prospect of an Earth unable to support even current levels of human population. Meta-externalities from economic systems are draining the resources on which they depend, from families and other institutions that educate and socialize human beings, to water, air, soil, and the diversity of species.

In a positive vein, economics in the 21st century has already taken a decidedly pluralist turn, spurred in part by the struggles of economists – mainstream and heterodox – to increase the relevance of economic theory, policy, and education in a changing and challenged world where no single theoretical tradition or institutional structure can reasonably claim to hold “the key” to human betterment.

ICAPE and the organizers of “Economic Pluralism for the 21st Century” invite proposals for papers that discuss or demonstrate the value of economic pluralism in any of its domains: economic theory and philosophy, economic institutions and policies, or economic education.

Panels will be organized around thematic topics, with an eye to encouraging dialogue among authors whose papers address similar issues from different points of view. In this fashion, we hope to promote critical engagement and mutual learning among conference participants.

Submission of Proposals

All paper and panel proposals should be submitted to Rob Garnett at r.garnett@tcu.edu, or by post to:

Rob Garnett
Department of Economics
Box 298510
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX 76129

Proposal deadline: January 15, 2007
Notification deadline: February 15, 2007

For individual paper proposals, please include the following:

Paper title
Brief abstract (200-250 words)
Your name and contact addresses (including institutional affiliation)

For panel proposals (3-4 papers), please include:

Panel title
Brief description of the panel’s focus
Brief abstract (200-250 words) for each paper
Each panelist’s name and contact addresses (including institutional affiliations)

When submitting a panel proposal, you are encouraged (but not required) to designate a session chair. Also, you are encouraged to propose a format for your session, including non-traditional formats such as roundtables, workshops, or presenter/audience dialogues.

Conference Fees and Registration

The conference will be held over three days, beginning on Friday morning, June 1, 2007, and ending midday on Sunday, June 3.

The conference fee covers Friday and Saturday lunches, a conference dinner Friday evening, tea/coffee breaks throughout the conference, and all printed conference materials.

Between now and April 1, 2007, the fee structure will be:

Regular rate: $150
Low-income rate (for graduate students, underemployed Ph.D.s, and others): $75

After April 1, 2007, the fee structure will be:

Regular rate: $175
Low-income rate: $75

To register for the conference, please fill out the registration and payment form (available at www.icape.org) and send it to:

Ed McNertney
Department of Economics
Box 298510
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX 76129

On Monday I’ll be heading out to the Triple Helix Conference on the Capitalization of Knowledge. I’ll be giving a paper that Educause blog, which I’m using only for these sorts of things, unlike my main blog which is mishmash.

On related news, our second paper in this sort of series is accepted at Internet Research 6.0, where I’m also coordinating a panel on the political economy of the internet.

Craigslist housing + Google Maps = brilliant:

Wow, this is cool. You can choose any city that Craigslist covers, sort by price range and see all of the places for rent in the city. If you click on a bubble, you can see the details including pictures. Sooo soo cool. I wish i would’ve had this when i was surfing for housing. *This* is how visualization becomes excessively useful.

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yes… this is very cool.

Promoting the global information commons: A statement by IFLA to WSIS Tunis PrepCom2, 2005:
Finally, we invite you to our pre-Summit conference in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, on 10 and 11 November 2005 at which we will show how libraries and information services around the world are realising the global information society for all.

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i wonder, i’d prolly never get funding for it…. but…. this is before ppf, which is before…. wsis… could i go to all three?

CFP: DAC 2005:
CFP: Digital Arts and Cultures (DAC) 2005: Digital Experience: Design, Aesthetics, Practice, 1st – 3rd December, 2005, IT University, Copenhagen, Denmark. Hmmmmm….Copenhagen!

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yup, it might be cold, but it will be fun. i hope i get something in.

Rhetoric and the Politicization of Science:
2005 American Association for the Rhetoric of Science and Technology (AARST) Workshop: Rhetoric and the Politicization of Science Wednesday, November 16, 2005 – Boston, MA The controversy over the “politicization” of science advice and policy under the Bush administration provides…
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this looks like it will be an excellent program.

ICT Policy: A Beginner’s Guide:
The handbook aims to build the capacity of interested persons to understand the issues around policy on ICT development and regulation, to grasp the policy process,and to become involved in this process.
http://www.apc.org/books/policy_handbook_EN.zip

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this could be handy…..